Many moons ago (whether barked at; sorry, last time as well for deliberate
use of phrases associated with dogs), proponents of using $280,000 given by the
Red River Waterway Commission to
build a dog park on the Shreveport river front brought in courts to intervene successfully
in the matter. The RRWC has the authority to fund projects of this nature with
its separate taxpayer dollars as long as they enhance the environment proximate
to the river. The problem was they didn’t have the land to do it, and therefore
would have to have the city agree upon putting it on city land, in particular in
Hamel Park.
The City Council was quite receptive to the idea, but not Glover. In a
thinly-disguised power play in order to extract money from the RRWC to pay for
projects Glover valued, and had asked it to fund, but that the city could not
afford as it tries to survive a strained budget that has been the hallmark of
Glover’s administration, he said he wouldn’t sign unless they added the others.
The RRWC stuck to its guns in stating it would fund only this project a
long-standing request for many years to them by citizens who organized
themselves as the Shreveport Dog
Park Alliance, and only river front items.
At that point, after the Council had passed an ordinance forcing Glover
to accept the money and build the park, even overriding his veto, Glover simply
refused, contrary to the city’s charter. That view was verified in May when
Caddo District Judge Leon Emmanuel ruled in favor of the Alliance’s request
that Glover must sign off on it, and gave him until Jun. 21 to do so. That got
extended until today.
This put Glover in an untenable position. Not only had his scheme to
find “free” money to do what he wanted failed, he had made matters worse by spending
taxpayer money to defend against the suit in addition to be forced to do what
he had opposed, which would humiliate him politically. So he came up with the
idea of trying to save face by delegitimizing the Hamel Park request in order
to avoid building a dog park there specifically with that money.
He pitched to some of the Council the day before the order was up that the
park should be built at Princess Park instead, eschewing the RRWC money
entirely but in what he claimed would be a far cheaper alternative, claiming it
could be done for $96,000 while alleging almost ten times that amount would have
to be spent to bring Hamel Park up to speed to support a dog park. The tactic
is to get the Council to repeal the ordinance with this enticement, since as
long as it remains on the books he must follow the court’s order, which no
doubt the Alliance would be glad to hold his feet to the fire.
Whether his cost assertions actually bear resemblance to reality is
another matter. It seems incredible that to support a smattering of dog owners
and their pooches at any given time would cost so much in adding to the very
underutilized park. The same infrastructure that accommodates picnickers and Frisbee
golf players appears entirely adequate, and even if additional funds seemed
necessary, the Alliance has had an ongoing fundraising campaign for years that
could pick that up. And why is it that the park would cost so much less at
Princess rather than Hamel when they are equivalent in terms of current
development of dog park infrastructure, i.e. close to zilch? Does that not mean
that a park could be built more cheaply than advertised at Hamel, and leftover dollars
also go to any infrastructural changes?
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